Let others spin their meagre lines for hire;
Enough for Genius if itself inspire!

Let SOUTHEY sing, although his teeming Muse,
Prolific every spring, be too profuse.

Let simple WORDSWORTH chime his childish verse,
And brother COLERIDGE lull the babe at nurse;
Let spectre-mongering LEWIS aim, at most,

To rouse the galleries, or to raise a ghost;

Let MOORE be lewd; let STRANGFORD steal from MOORE,
And swear that CAMOENS sang such notes of yore;
Let HAYLEY hobble on; MONTGOMERY rave;
And godly GRAHAME chant a stupid stave;
Let sonneteering BOWLES his strains refine,
And whine and whimper to the fourteenth line;
Let STOTT, CARLISLE,* MATILDA, and the rest
Of Grub-street, and of Grosvenor-place the best,

be less addicted to "Gramarye," and more to Grammar, than the lady of the Lay, and her Bravo William of Deloraine.

* It may be asked why I have censured the earl of Carlisle, my guardian and relative, to whom I dedicated a volume of puerile poems a few years ago. The guardianship was nominal, at least as far as I have been able to. discover; the relationship I cannot help, and am very sorry for it; but as his lordship seemed to forget it on a very essential occasion to me, I shall not burthen my memory with the recollection. I do not think that personal differences sanction the unjust condemnation of a brother scribbler; but I see no reason why they should act as a preventive, when the author, noble or ignoble, has for a series of years beguiled a " discerning public" (as the advertisements have it) with divers reams of most orthodox imperial nonsense. Besides, I do not step aside to vituperate the earl; no-his works came fairly in review with those of other patrician literati. If, before I escaped from my teens, I said any thing in favour of his lordship's paper books, it was in the way of dutiful dedication, and more from the advice of others than my own judgment, and I seize the first opportunity of pronouncing my sincere recantation. I have heard that some persons conceive me to be under obligations to Lord Carlisle: if so, I shall be most particularly happy to learn what they are, and when conferred, that they may be duly appreciated, and publicly acknowledged. What I have humbly advanced as an opinion on VOL. III. 17

Scrawl on till death release us from the strain,
Or Common Sense assert her rights again;
But thou, with powers that mock the aid of praise,
Should'st leave to humbler bards ignoble lays:
Thy country's voice, the voice of all the nine
Demand a hallow'd harp-that harp is thine.
Say! will not Caledonia's annals yield
The glorious record of some nobler field,
Than the vile foray of a plundering clan
Whose proudest deeds disgrace the name of man?
Or Marmion's acts of darkness, fitter food
For outlaw'd SHERWOOD's tales of ROBIN HOOD?
Scotland! still proudly claim thy native bard,
And be thy praise his first, his best reward!
Yet not with thee alone his name should live,
But own the vast renown a world can give;
Be known, perchance, when Albion is no more,
And tell the tale of what she was before;
To future times her faded fame recall,
And save her glory, though his country fall.
Yet what avails the sanguine poet's hope?'
To conquer ages and with tìme to cope!
New eras spread their wings, new nations rise,
And other victors* fill the applauding skies;
A few brief generations fleet along,

Whose sons forget the poet and his song:

his printed things, I am prepared to support if necessary, by quotations from elegies, eulogies, odes, episodes, and certain facetious and dainty tragedies bearing his name and mark:

"What can ennoble knaves, or fools, or cowards?

Alas! not all the blood of all the Howards!"

So says Pope. Amen!

Tolere humo, victorque virum volitare per ora."-Virgil.

E'en now, what once lov'd minstrels scarce may claim
The transient mention of a dubious name!

When Fame's loud trump hath blown its noblest blast,
Though long the sound, the echo sleeps at last,
And glory, like the Phoenix 'midst her fires,
Exhales her odours, blazes, and expires.
Shall hoary Granta call her sable sons,
Expert in science, more expert at puns?
Shall these approach the muse? ah no! she flies,
And even spurns the great Seatonian prize,
Though printers condescend the press to soil
With rhyme by HOARE, and epic blank by HOYLE;
Not him whose page, if still upheld by whist,
Requires no sacred theme to bid us list.*

Ye! who in Granta's honours would surpass,
Must mount her Pegasus, a full-grown ass;
A foal well worthy of her ancient dam,
Whose Hellicon is duller than her Cam.

There CLARKE, still striving piteously "to please,"
Forgetting doggrel leads not to degrees,

A would-be satirist, a hir'd buffoon,

A monthly scribbler of some low lampoon,
Condemn'd to drudge, the meanest of the mean,
And furnish falsehoods for a magazine,
Devotes to scandal his congenial mind;
Himself a living libel on mankind.t

*The "Games of Hoyle," well known to the votaries of whist, chess, &c. are not to be superseded by the vagaries of his poetical namesake, whose poem comprised, as expressly stated in the advertisement, all the "Plagues of Egypt."

This person, who has lately betrayed the most rapid symptoms of confirmed authorship, is writer of a poem denominated the " Art of Pleasing,', as "Incus a non lucendo," containing little pleasantry and less poesy. He also acts as monthly stipendiary and collector of calumnies for the Satirist

Oh dark asylum of a Vandal race!"

At once the boast of learning, and disgrace;

So sunk in dulness and so lost in shame

That SMYTEE and HODGSON† Scarce redeem thy fame!

But where fair Isis rolls her purer wave,
The partial Muse delighted loves to lave,
On her green banks a greener wreath is wove,
To crown the bards that haunt her classic grove,
Where RICHARDS wakes a genuine poet's fires,
And modern Britons justly praise their sires.‡
For me, who thus unask'd have dar'd to tell
My country, what her sons should know too well,
Zeal for her honour bade me here engage
The host of idiots that infest her age.

No just applause her honour'd name shall lose,
As first in freedom, dearest to the Muse.
Oh would thy bards but emulate thy fame,
And rise, more worthy, Albion, of thy name!
What Athens was in science, Rome in power,
What Tyre appear'd in her meridian hour,
"Tis thine at once, fair Albion, to have been,
Earth's chief dictatress, Ocean's mighty queen;
But Rome decay'd, and Athens strew'd the plain,
And Tyre's proud piers lie shatter'd in the main :

If this unfortunate young man would exchange the magazines for the mathematics, and endeavour to take a decent degree in his university, it might eventually prove more serviceable than his present salary.

* "Into Cambridgeshire the emperor Probus transported a considerable body of Vandals.”-Gibbon's Decline and Fall, page 83, vol. 2. There is no reason to doubt the truth of this assertion, the breed is still in high perfec

tion.

This gentleman's name requires no praise: the man who in translation displays unquestionable genius, may well be expected to excel in original composition, of which it is to be hoped we shall soon see a splendid specimen. The Aboriginal Britons," an excellent poem by Richards.

Like these thy strength may sink, in ruin hurl'd,
And Britain fall, the bulwark of the world.
But let me cease, and dread CASSANDRA's fate,
With warning ever scoff'd at, till too late;
To themes less lofty still my lay confine,
And urge thy bards to gain a name like thine.
Then, hapless Britain! be thy rulers blest,
The senate's oracles, the people's jest!
Still hear thy motley orators dispense

The flowers of rhetoric, though not of sense,
While CANNING's colleagues hate him for his wit,
And old dame PORTLAND* fills the place of PITT.
Yet once again adieu! ere this the sail
That wafts me hence is shivering in the gale;
And Afric's coast and Calpe's† adverse height,
And Stamboul's‡ minarets must greet my sight:
Thence shall I stray thro' Beauty's) native clime,
Where Kaff|| is clad in rocks, and crown'd with snows sub-

lime.

But should I back return, no letter'd rage

Shall drag my common-place book on the stage:
Let vain VALENTIA ** rival luckless Carr,

And equal him whose work he sought to mar;

* A friend of mine being asked why his grace of P. was likened to an old woman, replied," he supposed it was because he was past bearing," † Calpe is the ancient name of Gibraltar.

Stamboul is the Turkish word for Constantinople.
Georgia, remarkable for the beauty of its inhabitants.

Mount Caucasus.

** Lord Valentia (whose tremendous travels are forthcoming with due decorations, graphical, topographical, and typographical) deposed, on Sir John Carr's unlucky suit, that Dubois's satire prevented his purchase of the "Stranger in Ireland." Oh, fie, my lord, has your lordship no more feeling for a fellow tourist? but " two of a trade," they say, &c.